There exist today several types of religious obligations relating to alms-giving or charitable giving by persons who subscribe to various religious faiths. For example, Zakat is an alms-giving practice of the Islamic faith based on accumulated wealth. In particular, Zakat requires Muslims who are able to do so to donate a percentage of their accumulated wealth to ease economic hardship for others and to eliminate inequality. A similar religious charitable tradition of “tithes” exists in the Christian and Jewish religious faiths.
Global Zakat annual contributions have been estimated to be between about $200 billion dollars and about $1 trillion dollars per year, and the low end of this estimate is estimated to be about fifteen (15) times more than all of the global humanitarian aid contributions made by countries in 2011. In order to conform to the Zakat obligation, a Muslim may typically have to give a certain percentage (for example, 2.5%) of the lowest daily closing balance on his main bank account over the course of a year to one or more nominated charities. In practice, this monetary amount can be onerous to calculate and difficult to disperse.
Accordingly, the inventors recognized that there is a need for a system for calculating and dispersing Zakat obligations (and for use in calculating and dispersing charitable sums based on other types of alms giving practices) that would be beneficial to both Contributors and Recipients.